


Delusions

by siojo



Series: Fairy Deals [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, Presumed Dead, mentions of miscarriages
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-14
Updated: 2013-10-14
Packaged: 2017-12-29 09:21:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1003700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/siojo/pseuds/siojo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sheriff John Stilinski was a widower. </p><p>A man who had spent twelve years happily married to the love of his life, only to loose her to cancer. Dedicated to his family until the very end. Until Claudia was buried in the cemetery and John was alone in the house they had bought to fill with their family. He wasn't a father.</p><p>There was no little boy with Claudia's eyes and smile or his curiosity. A delusion, the therapist had promised, to deal with losing his wife. A coping mechanism that they would get rid of before it got too well entrenched.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Delusions

Sheriff John Stilinski is a widower.

A man who spends twelve years happily married to the love of his life, only to loose her to cancer. A dedicated family man until the very end. Until Claudia is buried in the cemetery and John is alone in the house they bought to fill with their family.

He isn't a father.

Claudia wasn't able to have children, but John isn't sure he remembers her talking about cysts or surgeries like the records they show him, and, for some reason, they never adopt a child in the years between their wedding and her death. Which makes no sense because Claudia had wanted children, loved them and made sure he knew that it would make or break their relationship early on.

His therapist, the one he gets assigned to after he calls Claudia's best friend, Melissa McCall, panicking about how he can't find Stiles, believes that his wife's late term miscarriage six years ago adds to his delusions. That his mind created a little boy with his wife's eyes and unending energy, his words still bouncing around in John's head.

 _But_ , she insists smiling kindly, _you've never had a child. Claudia's baby died before she did, there isn't a little boy, Mr. Stilinski, and the persistence of this delusion is starting to concern people._

He doesn't tell her that the late term miscarriage and the medical records she shows him contradict each other. One says that Claudia's ovaries were sugically removed when she was fifteen, while another describes a late term miscarriage that isn't possible if she didn't have a functioning reproductive system.

John has pictures, and Jesus, his son looks like Claudia. Amber eyes and wide smiles that spill across his face at the slightest provocation. Even when Melissa says it's one of John's nephews, who don't exist because the closest relative John has is a great-great aunt suffering from dementia in Washington.

And he's not alone.

Chris and Victoria Argent put a missing persons report out for a daughter that, records say, was killed in an accident when she was three and the Martins go to court with the hospital for loosing the records of a younger daughter, who's blood sample is still locked inside the family safe and doesn't test as anything but another child.

Victoria lasts a year before she flees Beacon Hills, divorcing her husband and hoping to out run her daughter's laughter, the kind she makes as she tries to escape Kate tickling her, as it echoes through the halls of their home. She calls every six months until she dies, asking if Chris has found their daughter and that she hasn't found her either.

The Martins buy into the illusion of delusions, moving to San Francisco two years later to escape the stigma. The older daughter is shoved into a hospital days later, after she complains of her baby sister's unending repeats of how she'll win a Fields Medal inside her mind.

The day Victoria dies, in the third year, is the day that John, finally, talks to Chris.

They compare notes and John ignores the police reports that Chris tries not actively show off, because he's daughter is gone and John can't fault him. Picking apart their own stories and then what is documented by the Martins before then recanted. It takes weeks, but they make a basic picture.

Stiles, a name that shows up even on the birth certificate, which John swears isn't his son's real name, Allison Argent, and Lydia, or Lyda, the Martins use both, Martin were dropped off at school two months after Claudia's funeral and never came home. Their teacher gives them an outline of the day, down to the snacks at snack time, and an odd note that Greenburg stumbled to the sand box with the toys and couldn't remember why.

Allison's report was first. After the bus had dropped everyone at her stop off but her. Stiles comes hours later when John calls the McCall's house because Stiles always walked in minutes after he's unloaded his gun and put it back in the safe. Lydia's is written in after ten that night, her parents coming home to discover that neither of them had picked her up and their oldest didn't know otherwise.

It is vague and makes John think of the stories Claudia whispered to him late at night when they first married, of people giving up something important for a gift from the fae. Talents, dreams, and names given up for power or family.

“Do you think our kids made a deal with a fairy,” John asks taking the beer Chris hands him. “Because, say Stiles gives up his first name and the life he was living. What would Allison and Lydia give up beside this life?”

Chris blinks thoughtfully. “Allison would give up archery or the relationship with her aunt. I assume Lydia's would have something to do with a dream of winning the Field's medal,” John lets his friend think it over, fairies make as much sense as everything else they've thought up. “But were would they meet one? Why make a deal?”

“We assume they finished the school day out. What if the fairy approached them during recess? Greenburg remembers going to the sand box with the toy, but not why, it's the only out of character incident that happened all day, if he was headed that way as they made the deal, there wouldn't be enough time to make him do something different,” John says excited. “Stiles would have done it if it meant getting Claudia back,” His eyes go wide. “Or keeping me safe.”

Chris looks triumphant for a moment and John knows he's right before his friend turns concerned. “Except fairies don't exist, right?”

“Of course.”

Chris waits until they're done fro the night, John still talking himself in circles about Fairy deals as he leaves, to throw open the doors to the safe in the basement. He promised Alpha Hale not to bring anyone into the know that lived in her town, but if John figures it out on his own, Chris wouldn't have told him.

It's a risk, Talia Hale might not believe him, but if John was right, and why hadn't it occurred to Chris first that it might be supernatural, their children where still alive. Allison might be out in the world somewhere and even without her memory, she is his daughter and he needs her safe.

He knows he's manipulated John, but if it means that Stiles Stilinski still has a home to come back to, Chris will live with it. The boy and Allison had people waiting for them. And honestly, Chris could be talked into taking the Martin girl, he would do anything if it meant getting his daughter back.

**Author's Note:**

> Claudia dies when they're probably six or seven, before the Hale Fire.


End file.
